“Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted”, Albert Einstein has famously quoted this. The statement rightly captures the fact that data just by itself is not important, it is crucial to look for right kind of data. A plethora of analytics tools and features are available today. Adding to it the fact that growing number of people are opting to transact online — as a result of which, massive amount of data gets generated every day. Site analysis need to have a clear understanding of business goals and problematic areas in order to carefully pick-up only data that matters through this enormous analytics data.

Google Analytics offers a super helpful feature named segments to help analysts access only the required subset of analytics data. Segments can break bulky data into smaller chunks and assist people in drawing quick meaningful conclusions.

Segments can be defined by creating filters across various dimensions and metrics such as user type, location, conversion rate etc. Google provides a list of default or built-in segments. It also allows analysts to create custom segments based on their individual needs. A number of segments are also available for free download through the Solutions Gallery.

In this article, we will look at 12 Google Analytics segments that will be absolutely helpful in analyzing web traffic for any online portal. Some of these segments are available by default while some needs to be custom created.

1. Mobile And Tablet Traffic, Desktop Traffic:

Google has previously clubbed both mobile and tablet data under one segment i.e. mobile traffic. However, a new default segment was introduced later to clearly separate mobile traffic from tablet traffic. There is also a separate default analytics segment to get desktop traffic. Together these 2 segments can provide data of tremendous value. If large majority of the traffic is coming from smartphones, analysts can take a call to truly revamp mobile presence of the site and invest relatively less on traditional desktop site.

2. Users By Age And Gender:

This analytics segment needs to be custom created, based on requirements of a particular site. Google offers various age ranges from 18 to 65+ to separate users based on age. A custom created segment based on age and gender can give analysts a clear picture where the visitor density actually lies. This can help them tweak advertisements, content and graphics to better suit the current user base. Analysts can also strategize about how to attract new users from other gender/pivots who are currently missing from the site.

3. Sessions With Conversions:

Every e-commerce portal is built around the central idea of converting regular visitors into buyers. This built-in analytics segment that gives number of conversions that happened within various slices of a certain time range. Analysts can determine data such as maximum number of conversions are happening between time range of say 181-600 seconds. This can help them create a strategy that will help visitors stay on the site for at least 3 minutes so that they can become potential buyers.

4. Location Analytics Segment:

Google offers data for Country/Territory and City by default, however this analytics segment can be further customized and created, based on site requirements.

Google offers other pivots to get granular location data such as continent, sub-continent region and region. Different sites are created based on different target market locations. For e.g. Flipkart is meant for mainly Indian audiences while Netflix is designed mainly for US audiences. Location data can help verify if majority of traffic is indeed coming from the desired target location and further granulate the data. It can also help get clearer idea of locations where maximum conversions are happening and tweak strategy to grow business in other target locations.

5. Date Of First Session:

This is a highly useful analytics segment to create cohorts based on when users first visited the site. It can be particularly useful to assess effectiveness of a specific campaign which was designed to attract users. Analysts can set date range of up-to 31 days to segment users and get appropriate data.

6. Operating System:

Minute data about whether majority traffic inflow is from Windows, Macintosh or other operating systems is super-helpful for analysts. Overall site’s look and feel, usability and user experience can be greatly tweaked using data coming from this analytics segment.

7. Traffic Sources:

Analysts can determine how users found the site using one or more of following 4 pivots :

AdWords campaigns or custom campaigns

Sources which referred visitors

Medium that referred traffic

All paid / unpaid keywords used by users to reach the site

This can immensely help advertising budget to focus on appropriate traffic source.

8. Browser Analytics Segment:

Based on whether maximum visits or conversions are happening via a particular browser such as Internet Explorer or Chrome, analysts can work on improving user experience while using site through that particular browser.

This analytics segment also helps in focusing on detecting problematic areas in browsers through which traffic flow is relatively less.

9. Language:

This analytics segment gives data about language settings in users’ browsers when they visit the page. So, for example, if majority of the incoming traffic is using UK English as their primary language, analysts can tweak the content, display as well as advertising to better suit the needs of the audience.

10. Converters And Non-Converters:

These are two in-built segments which are essential to understand effectiveness of any marketing strategy. Together, then can help analyst to enhance their current marketing effort, identify weak spots and reach potential untapped customer base.

11. Service Providers:

By using this segment, analysts can eliminate bot traffic, detect if there are any visitors with non-standard profile and filter out internal traffic within the company. In general, this segment helps improve precision quotient of the reports.

12. New And Returning customers:

This is one of the very basic essential analytics segments that allows analysts to determine what percentage of new users are returning to the site. It can lead to creating new marketing campaigns or engagement initiatives to help attract non-returning users back to the site.

The beauty about Google Analytics segments is that they need not be applied in isolation. Analysts can apply 4 analytics segments on a report, derive deep meaningful insights and subsequently create ideas to attract more traffic and grow the business.